India talks with JP Morgan, others to join bond indexes: Sources

The sources declined to be identified because of the sensitivity of the matter. Reuters

SummaryFM P. Chidambaram has planned meets next week in the US over the bond indexes issue.

India is talking with JP Morgan and others to gain entry to benchmark indexes for emerging market debt in hopes of attracting billions of dollars in investment and may ease some restrictions on foreign inflows in order to do so, sources said.

Finance Minister P. Chidambaram and other officials plan to meet next week in the United States with big fund managers that track such indexes including Pimco, Capital International and Standard Life, one of the sources with direct knowledge of the matter said.

To qualify for entry into the widely-followed JP Morgan Government Bond Index - Emerging Markets, India needs to ease rules on registration, documentation, due diligence rules for the entry of foreign institutional investors (FIIs) in the Indian debt market, besides allowing them to invest more in the govt debt, two sources said.

The sources declined to be identified because of the sensitivity of the matter.

A finance ministry spokesman declined to comment.

With a wide current account gap and a weakened rupee , India wants to attract some of the billions of dollars managed passively by tracking global indexes. However, Indian restrictions limit foreign investment in onshore debt, which exclude it from indexes managed by JP Morgan and others.

India has been taking steps to ease investment rules but is also skittish about fully removing limits given worries about the volatility of global flows. Its credit rating also stands just one notch above junk status, although a downgrade would not disqualify it from an emerging market index.

Inclusion in popular government bond indexes could attract $20 billion-$40 billion in additional flows into India over a year, Standard Chartered Bank wrote in a report last month.

"This is kind of opening up the debt market completely, with all the good and bad that comes with it," said Dilip Parameswaran, head of Asia Credit Advisors, an independent fixed-income consultancy in Hong Kong.

"It won't solve its balance of payments problems immediately as both the government and the index providers need to finalise details and following which investors will have to readjust their portfolios," he said.

MODIFYING RULES

In seeking index inclusion, India may modify rules to allow foreign institutions to invest more in government debt, now capped at $30 billion.

While India doesn't want to do away with caps entirely, it is considering further loosening rules that allow higher limits once investors reach 80 percent of the cap, one of the